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Surviving the ‘Valley of Death’: A New Funding Database Aims to Help Agtech Companies Avoid Early-Stage Failure
Population growth and climate change are bringing extraordinary challenges to the agriculture sector in emerging markets. But though small- and medium-sized enterprises are essential to addressing these issues, they remain underfunded – particularly in the period before they become profitable (often referred to as the ‘‘Valley of Death’’). Aarno Keijzer at NpM explores these challenges, and presents a free database that NpM has compiled, highlighting funds that can help early-stage agriculture companies bridge this financial gap.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Tags
- agtech, business development, data, failure
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Press Release: More Than Half a Million Rohingya Refugees Receive Identity Documents, Most for the First Time
This comprehensive registration being simultaneously carried out in all refugee settlements in Cox’s Bazar – is meant to ensure the accuracy of data on refugees in Bangladesh, giving national authorities and humanitarian partners a better understanding of the population and their needs.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- data, digital identity, refugees
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Turning Impact Intention into Impact Evidence: How to Put the GIIN’s IRIS+ Metrics into Action
Accounting for impact is notoriously difficult. And though impact investors have long turned to the GIIN's IRIS metrics as a standardized measurement tool, as SoPact co-founder Hetal Sheth points out, the IRIS metrics don't make impact strategy actionable. Now that the GIIN has reintroduced its standards with IRIS+, Sheth explores how the new metrics improve on the previous version – and how SoPact’s Impact Cloud platform can help investors use them to build a robust impact management strategy.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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How Artificial Intelligence Can Simplify International Development Research: An Intriguing Experiment (Involving NextBillion)
International development professionals must often spend a great deal of time trying to keep up with news, trends and research about their area of activity – and this requires a lot of manual labor. But much of this can now be automated and aided by artificial intelligence (AI). Jacob Rosen and Ashirul Amin at BFA explore how they used AI to sort and categorize a vast amount of development-focused content online, using NextBillion's 5,000+ article library as a test case. The results of their experiment show how AI can help people reduce time and labor and learn more efficiently.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Turning Impact Measurement on its Head: A Q&A with 60 Decibels Co-Founders Sasha Dichter and Tom Adams
How should a social business measure its impact? The sector has always struggled to answer that question, leaving many enterprises and investors without useful data about the impact of their work. Acumen is addressing this issue by spinning out a standalone social enterprise called 60 Decibels, which leverages mobile technology to quickly and easily acquire impact data from low-income customers and beneficiaries. Co-founders Sasha Dichter and Tom Adams discuss its innovative model, and the potential it offers to investors, enterprises and the people they serve.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing, Social Enterprise
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Press Release: Acumen Launches 60 Decibels to Make Lean Data an Impact Measurement Standard for Impact Investing
The new entity, supported by lead investor Ceniarth, makes customer-centric impact measurement accessible to all, helping social sector organizations listen to those who matter most
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
- Region
- Global
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Ghana Is Adopting a Data-Driven Approach to Fighting Poverty
The government is now seriously committed to a “leave no one behind” ethic, which means counting every single person in the population. That includes people who are sometimes called “the invisible” — those who live in slums, who are homeless, or who are institutionalized.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Are We Actually Making Progress on the SDGs?
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) outline 17 areas where we need to make a collective effort and provide a useful sustainability framework for business and other actors. We have a decade until the 2030 deadline and businesses are increasingly committing to the goals in a public way.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment